Though Jane falls madly in love with Tarzan, how does she understand what he is? Is he an ape? An Englishman? Civilized or savage? What makes her think so, and will her evidence convince her father and her lover, Clayton?
Waiting for the prolonged death of torture, the Frenchman D'Arnot reflects, "He was a solider of France, and he would teach these beasts how an office and a gentleman died" (199). Why does Burroughs contrast his nobility and stoicism with the "rolling demon eyes" of the natives? Is this another racist passage in the book, or is Burroughs merely trying to illustrate the inhumanity of man to another men?
How does Burroughs describe the courtship of Tarzan and Jane? What is unusual about it? Why does Jane, herself, occasionally feel ashamed of it (and initially repulse him)? Consider passages such as this one: "What a perfect creature! There could be nought of cruelty or baseness beneath that godlike exterior. Never, she thought had such a man strode the earth since God created the first in his own image" (184).
Writing of the fight between Tarzan and Tarkoz, Burroughs notes "Jane Porter...watched the primordial ape battle with the primeval man for possession of a woman--for her" (175). How is the same battle being enacted, more symbolically, between Tarzan and Clayton?
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